Utility companies, and similar entities, have started to take advantage of modern technology to reduce costs and increase efficiency in meter reading applications. Traditionally, meters, such as electric, water, and gas meters, have been manually read by a person physically reading each meter. However, recent developments have provided for meters which can be remotely accessed from a central location through wire or wireless (e.g., radio frequency, etc.) communication links. Oftentimes, these remotely accessible meters have battery powered meter interface units which can access the meter status information, and which can communicate via radio frequency signals the meter status information to a remotely situated meter reading device. In such cases, issues associated with power consumption management are an important since the meter interface devices in the system are typically battery operated.
In a typical operational environment, a meter reading system includes a large number of remote meters which are connected to meter interface units. Low maintenance battery-operated meter interface units are desirable to facilitate operating efficiency and to reduce maintenance costs. Therefore, it is desirable to have a meter interface unit which can operate for an extended period of time without requiring frequent maintenance for battery replacement and the like. Such maintenance requirements may be reduced by increasing the battery capacity used by each of the meter interface units or by reducing the power consumed by each meter interface unit. The more viable option of reducing power consumption at the battery powered meter interface unit is usually pursued due to the added cost and space increase problems brought about by trying to solve the problem by using a larger capacity battery. For example, the meter interface device may be placed in a sleep or low power operating mode when there is no ongoing communication with a meter reading device. A trade off is usually made between the availability of the meter interface device for communications with the meter reading device and the amount of power consumption savings which can be achieved. A meter interface device employing a power consumption saving technique may not be able to communicate with the remote meter reading device given that the radio circuitry or sections of circuitry in the meter interface unit may be shut-off when the unit is in the sleep mode in order to conserve the unit's battery energy.
As been discussed, above, there exists a need for a method of reading a plurality of remote meters in a way which provides for improved battery savings for the remote meter interface units and at the same time also does not adversely affect the acquisition time required to read the plurality of meter interface units.